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I like your way of thinking. Letsee. Shirley Williams co-founded the SDP. S = 19th letter of the alphabet D = 4th P = 16th 19 + 4 + 16 = 39 points, throw in a decimal point to make it a much smaller 3.9 which is the consolation score Bibliogryphon receives for his mistaken omission. With this hearty haul he gets his first points of the game.

W. Galen Weston, one of Canada's richest, dead at 80.

Personally not a single one, I don't watch broadcast tv as I find the vast bulk of it tedious in the first place so I can just sit back and laugh. I get/got as much Phil news as I require (and more) from this place in a few clicks. However: One* channel devoted to the bloke is plenty, it covers those who wish to wallow in the endless repetition and cry into their sherry (hello Iain) whilst the rest can get on with their lives and watch something else. The complaints are totally reasonable, people are paying a licence fee for this. I reckon this is about the bbc waving the flag and politics rather than providing a service to its viewers. *In fact they should just have stuffed it on the bbc news channel since as far as I know that's available to nearly all now on digital or satellite and left even bbc1 alone.

Hell no, anyone who saw the bio/documentary recently got let into enough to see Shane's a total mess. Keith - once he cleaned up from the smack addiction of the 70s - has used the fags and Jack Daniels as something of a prop. The recent(ish) doc made clear Shane is a serious alcoholic and his drug use has done for his mental health a few times to the point he's been sectioned. The main reason he's wheelchair bound is that his balance is fucked and for much of the filming Shane was shipping alcohol to the point his diction is shot too. So the speech centre of his brain has likely shipped damage that won't repair. With our without the scenes where Johnny Depp is fawning over Shane and pouring his drink (because Shane's co-ordination is so fucked at that point he can't pour his own) the man's life choices and accumulated damage are blatantly obvious. The real fucked up deal, frankly - and should be DDP Drop Forty if he makes the start line next year.

quite close… but nos exactly sorry ! New round opens for the 7th hit of this year, here are the choices : April 12th : Bentrovato April 13th : DCI Frank Burnside April 15th : Sean April 17th : Bibliogryphon April 18th : Klinews April 19th : chilean way April 20th : theoldlady April 21st : Paul Bearer April 23rd : Redrumours April 24th : Book April 30th : Dying Probably May 1st : roaming_comrade May 2nd : Putin May 5th : The Red Death May 7th : DiE humanity May 8th : reaper rose May 9th : The Quim Reaper May 10th : ladyfiona May 12th : Reaper World May 21st : the_engineer May 27th : Fergie86 @arghton and @Sir Creep, both of your dates were already taken, if you want to participate, please take an other one ! Good luck y'all

Had to google it as I'd forgotten the name. Finding Alice, apparently. Finding Alice - Wikipedia

Hall of Fame NBA-guard and coach Bobby Leonard, who played for the Minneapolis/Los Angeles Lakers and Chicago Packers/Zephyrs from 1956-1963, died at 88 years: https://fortwaynesnbc.com/2021/04/13/basketball-legend-bobby-slick-leonard-dead-at-88/

LOVED this - basically how a man psychologically damaged by losing his mother as a baby channeled that into a lifetime's academia which got him a Pulitzer prize but also got progressively more esoteric (he wrote a best-seller laying out case studies that had convinced him alien abduction claims were the real deal), until he was pretty much a fully fledged mystic. For all that his end was prosaic to say the least. Note to Americans prone to having deep wandering thoughts; when crossing a London road, remember Brits drive on the left!

Scottish author Muriel Spark died on this day 15 years ago, aged 88.

Sounds like the start of a bestselling novel....

Peter Warner, who discovered the Tongan castaways in 1966 has drowned. He was 90 https://www.9news.com.au/national/peter-warner-dies-when-yacht-capsized-ballina-nsw/11f491fa-703f-47dc-938b-3375b416c352

@Grim Up North @Toast I thought the lead in The Good Place was annoying too, but the show picked up steam after a season or so. Ted Danson clearly enjoys himself a lot in it. Anyhow, I do know who Jamil is as a result and she's quite good in it. Didn't know the other two until it was mentioned.

(Hey, I missed TOTP repeats and I wont see them till... Friday. ) After Diana, there was a BBC inquiry into how to cover something like this and they decided that interrupting programming to announce, then focusing on that on one of the major channels that day was the best way forward. Which iirc is what they did for the Queen Mum. However, since then, the Beeb have been getting in the neck from their pay masters (ie the government), especially in recent years, for not being patriotic* enough and so we got what happened - basically, it wasn't about respect, or mourning, it was a bit of virtue signalling to the Tory backbenchers. (Which in the end is pointless imo because that lot would want rid of the Beeb if it became the 24/7 Brexit is amazing with some Archers channels!) (Also note the top two at the Beeb are now the former boss of Rishi Sunak and Tory fundraiser, and a friend of Dominic Cummings, so watch for more government friendly shifts in the future...) (You don't want to get me started on governments deliberately confusing patriotism with "agreeing with them" as this lot do all the fucking time...)

I'm in a charitable mood this morning

Haha - that’s as far as I got too!

I've found a report on the podcast Jameela did; @Banana will be pleased to hear she did include herself as 'useless'. In the context she's talking, she's quite right, celebrities,, during lockdown, have, for the most part been useless, compared with front-line workers. As a general rule, I stand by celebrities being no more or less useless than the rest of us; I'm particularly useless when it comes to most things (identifying celebrities from post-2000 for example), but even I can pick up a bottle of wine from the supermarket, so not completely useless. I'll wager Jedward, Jameela, Jaden & Justin (and all the other celebs beginning with J) are just as useful, given the chance.

Anyone from reality TV pretty much.

Jameela Jamil (1986), actress (The Good Place) and radio presenter (BBC Radio 1). Jaden Smith (1998), actor/rapper and son of Will Smith. Justin Bieber (1994), Canadian singer-songwriter, hits include Baby and Love Yourself.

https://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/synes-det-er-trist/73625035 Read about this on twitter: Hans Gaarder, a lead figure in the covid denialist movement in Norway has died at age 60 from covid.

John Pelan, horror writer and editor is dead at 63

American film director and producer Richard Rush dies at 91. He was well-remembered for "The Stunt Man", for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rush_(director)

As film director Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959) is mentioned in the description of this thread, I decided to check how many main DeMille actors are alive. The list isn't large: Samson and Delilah (1949): Angela Lansbury (born 1925) Russ Tamblyn (born 1934) The Ten Commandments (1956): Debra Paget (born 1933) Fraser Clarke Heston (born 1955) DeMille as executive producer: When Worlds Collide (1951): Barbara Rush (born 1927) Rachel Ames (born 1929) The War of the Worlds (1953): Ann Robinson (born 1929) The Buccaneer (1958): Claire Bloom (born 1931) DeMille also had cameos in: Glamour Boy (1941), only alive actor is Darryl Hickman (born 1931) Sunset Boulevard (1950), only alive actor is Nancy Olson (born 1928) Son of Paleface (1952), only alive actor is Sylvia Lewis (born 1931) The Buster Keaton Story (1957), only alive actor is Ann Blyth (born 1928)

A hat-trick of deaths this day last year, seemingly announced within minutes of each other... Peter Bonetti, aged 78 Tim Brooke-Taylor OBE, aged 79 Sir Stirling Moss, aged 90.

Somehow. Absolutely no chance this holds. I’d be thrilled to end up in the Top 50. However, I’ll take a very small amount of satisfaction being number one at this point in the year.